Category Archives: Biofuels & Climate Change

This summer the Illinois Corn Marketing Board and Illinois Corn Growers decided to focus on getting positive messages regarding corn to young consumers utilizing the internet. Megan Ott and Danny Harms have produced a series of tongue-in-cheek YouTube videos. In this video, Danny and Megan take a look at one myth surrounding the corn based ethanol debate. Check it out… [youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=ORpM3PEJ1QU]

The Farm Foundation recently released a report prepared by Purdue University agricultural economists on the forces driving food price increases. They conclude that higher food prices are the result of the complex interaction of global changes in supply and demand for commodities, the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, as well as growth in production of biofuels. According to the authors, these factors have combined to rapidly raise demand for U.S. grains beyond current production, leading Read More >

A recent study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin takes another look at the “carbon debt” models proposed by Searchinger and Fargione in ScienceXpress earlier this year. Searchinger and Fargione argued that biofuel development in the United States and Europe would lead to the destruction of rainforests and grassland in Brazil and other tropical climates, which would of course release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere (See earlier posting). The new study takes Read More >

I was poking around on YouTube today, looking for stuff about biotechnology. It’s kinda like going through someone’s attic. Anyway I found some neat stuff. BIOTECH, in India is doing some neat things with biotechnology to help the environment. This then reminded me of our Pacific Rim meeting, where we will have companies from India participating. Anyway, check out the video. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrtINiLgNKY]

Britain’s Renewable Fuels Agency this week released the Gallagher Review, a report on the indirect effects of biofuels production that was prompted by the Searchinger and Fargione studies published in Science earlier this year. (See this blog’s earlier post on the forthcoming study.) The summary of the conclusions of the Gallagher Review include some very telling comments: Quantification of GHG emissions from indirect land-use change requires subjective assumptions and contains considerable uncertainty. “Current lifecycle analyses Read More >